Joseph Roth - Confession of a Murderer

I had reached no decision. But the good spirit which never leaves us, not even when we are scoundrels by birth and nature, suddenly brought back the memory of Channa Lea. And I said: “I do not need money. I need a favor from the Prince. If he is as powerful as you say, he can do it for me. Can I see him?”

“Immediately!” said the old man. He returned his watch to his pocket and stood up. “Come with me!”

The private coach of Prince Krapotkin — the genuine one — was standing outside the hotel. We drove off. We drew up in front of the Prince’s private house. It was a villa in the Bois de Boulogne, and in the lackey at the door, who wore a beard like the secretary, I thought I recognized that same servant whom I had seen so many, many years ago in the summer residence of the old Prince at Odessa.

I was announced. The secretary left me. I waited for at least half an hour. I sat, anxious and depressed, downstairs in the anteroom, as I had once sat in the anteroom of the old Prince. But I was far different from the Golubchik of those days. Then, the world had stood open before me; today, I was a Golubchik who had lost the world. I knew it. And yet it mattered little to me. I had only to force myself to think of Channa Lea, and it mattered not at all to me.

At last I was ushered into the Prince’s room. He looked exactly the same as he had that time when I watched him through a crack in the wall and saw him in a chambre separée with Lutetia. Yes, he looked exactly the same. How shall I describe him to you? You know the type: an aristocratic, impotent windbag. He looked not unlike a used-up piece of soap. So pale and insipid was his skin. He looked like a piece of used-up yellow soap with a thin black mustache. I hated him as I had always hated him.

He was pacing backwards and forwards across the room, and when I entered he never stopped for a moment. He paced on, as though the old man had brought, not me, but a doll. Neither did he turn to me, but to the secretary, and asked: “How much?”

“I would like to deal with you myself,” I said.

“I would not,” he answered and never paused for a moment in his pacing. He looked at the secretary. “Deal with him!”

“I do not need money,” I said. “If you are really as powerful as you say, you can have everything you want of me if you will free two men from Katorga and a girl from punishment. Immediately. If you free them within a week!”

“Very well,” said the secretary. “But until then, you will hide yourself as far as possible. Give me the facts.”

I gave him the facts about the brothers Rifkin. In a few days I would be informed of the result.

I waited a few days. I waited, I must say, with the greatest impatience, with a sort of moral impatience. I purposely say “with moral impatience,” because at that time a longing for repentance overcame me, and I believed that the moment had arrived in which I could atone for all my vileness with one so-called “good deed.”

I waited. I waited.

At last I was summoned to the Prince’s private house.

The dignified old secretary received me, sitting. He made a gesture of invitation, but only a very fleeting one, not even inviting me to be seated, but rather as though brushing me away, as one disposes of a fly.

In defiance, I sat down and crossed my legs. In defiance, too, I said: “Where is the Prince?”

“To you, not at home,” answered the old man mildly. “The Prince asked me to tell you that he has no time to bother with political affairs. He will have nothing to do with such sordid matters. Neither will he bargain with you. In addition to that, you would be in a position to denounce him, as you have already done once before, and to represent him as a protector of persons hostile to the State. You understand. We can only offer you money. If you will not accept that, we have other means of removing you from Paris. You can scarcely be as indispensable to our country as all that. There are certainly others who are just as useful, if not more so, than you.”

“I will not take money,” I replied, “and I shall stay in Paris.” At that, I thought of my sympathetic chief, Solovejczyk. I would explain everything to him. But I had completely forgotten the dead stare he had given me on the last occasion I saw him. I imagined that Solovejczyk favored me, was even fond of me.

I determined to go to him immediately.

I got up and said solemnly (today it seems to me ridiculous): “A real Krapotkin”—I emphasised the word: real —“accepts no compensation money. A false one offers it.”

I expected a gesture, a word of indignation from the mouth of the old man. But he never moved. He did not even look at me. He only stared at the black surface of his desk, as though there were papers lying there, as though he were reading in the wood, and as though there stood written there the sentence which he spoke a few seconds later.

“Go,” he said, without lifting his gaze, let alone getting up himself, “and do what seems fitting to you.”

The word “fitting” made me redden.

I went, without a word. It was raining, and I bade the flunkey fetch me a cab. I still felt myself a prince, although I already knew that I was once more a Golubchik; at the most I could only remain a Krapotkin for a few more days.

But I was happy, my friends, in spite of the knowledge that in a little while I should have to return to my old existence and my rightful name. Believe me, I was happy. And if anything grieved me then, it was the fact that I had been unable to help the Jewess Rifkin. For I had indeed thought that I had found an opportunity to atone for all the evil I had done. Well! — I had least saved my own existence, and perhaps even purified it a little.

When I returned to the hotel — it was getting late and solitary lights were already burning in the hall — I was informed that a gentleman was waiting for me in the writing room.

I thought it must be Lakatos, and went, without saying a word, into the writing room. But the figure which rose from the broad sofa behind a table was far from being my friend Lakatos; it was, to my astonishment, the fashionable dressmaker, the creator of “creations.”

There was a sort of twilight in the writing room, which was strengthened rather than weakened by the green-shaded lamps which stood on the various writing tables. The lamps seemed to me like illuminated poison bottles.

In this curious light the broad pale face of the dressmaker looked to me like dough in the oven, dough which is rising. Yes, the nearer he came to me, the greater grew his pulpy face, greater and broader even in comparison to his over-large, flapping, effeminate clothes. He bowed before me, and it was as though a sort of square ball were doing obeisance to me. I was no longer inclined to believe that the dressmaker was a real living being.

“Prince,” he said, as he laboriously raised his angular and yet spherical body, “may I discuss a small detail with you?”

It seemed to me ridiculous that someone should still address me as “Prince,” but nevertheless it flattered me. I begged the man to say what was on his mind.

“A mere detail, Prince,” he reassured me, “an absurd trifle.” And at that he described a complete circle in the air with his fat doughy hand. “It is a question of a small debt. The matter is distressing to me, even repugnant. It concerns Mademoiselle Lutetia’s clothes.”

“What clothes?” I asked.

“Two months have already passed,” said Monsieur Charron. “And Mademoiselle Lutetia is an extraordinary person, girl — lady, I mean. It is sometimes difficult to get on with her. She is, I must say, a real lady, not like the others. And although she is the daughter of one of my ordinary, what am I saying, of one of my greatest colleagues, she has the same tastes (quite rightly) as the most exclusive of our customers. I must confess, Your Highness, I must confess that I have sold her, that is, to Mademoiselle Lutetia, three of my best models, which she herself had displayed. But I would never have come to disturb Your Highness, were I not momentarily suffering from certain acute financial embarrassments.”